We take the colony sim genre into the near future, onto a lush planet where humans are making their first foothold. Characters and alien wildlife are brought to life through a rigorous simulation, making the game a tug-of-war between humans and nature on an alien planet.

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Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.

Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you
should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“We launched the game on Early Access in March 2014 to help finance the game’s development and to involve players in the process. The time since then was spent on getting the core mechanics finished and stable, as well as giving better feedback to the player about what the simulation was doing. Basically improving usability and playability.

Now that we have this work mostly done, we will be able to bring many more interesting gameplay features in, and make sure that the game realizes its full potential.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We will stay in Early Access until all of the fundamentals are in place and we feel that we have delivered a solid product. After that we will sell the game as completed, however, we hope to continue improving and expanding the game long after it's been released.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The full version will be a well rounded game offering even deeper gameplay and replayability. The scenarios will be more finely tuned to provide a suitable challenge at any selected difficulty level.

Early Access: Planned features

During the Early access phase we wish to develop most of the following features. But our plans could change, depending on the feedback we get and the resources we have:

Modding support (maps, scenarios, game data)

Save game functionality -DEPLOYED!

Languages (community provided translations)

Many more scenarios

Creatures can feed on food items and carcasses -DEPLOYED!

Research

Diseases / treatment

More animations / effects

Interface graphics polished

-DEPLOYED!

There will be more and deeper gameplay features, for instance trade, research, health simulation and diplomacy. Construction options will include electrical power, more buildings as well as building improvements.

Possible features in the long term (after Early Access)

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The game is fully playable: It has a functioning alien ecology system, a production economy and combat system. It has a tutorial scenario, 2 scenarios with unlimited gameplay under development as well as a save/load system in place.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“Yes, the price of the full game will be higher and we will also raise the price during EA as more features are added. So jump in now!”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We regularly visit our forum to read and comment on feedback from players, and many times it influences the development path. Feedback is valuable for us when we discuss which road to take in the dev team.”

Buy Unclaimed World

Recommended By Curators

July 31

A new version was just released on the test branch. These are the changes:

- Animation fix (walking-in-place bug)
- Fixed a bug where characters would try to hunt animals far away, then abandon the attempt right after. Also added feedback to the task list for this situation.
- Fixed a crash that would happen when the area near the camp did not have any items.
- The dog will now wander about when idle.

July 29

Hi all - we just put up a new version on the test branch. It has these changes:

GAMEPLAY FEATURES:
-Greenhouse can now be built from primitive materials - the translucent sheets that cover it are made from the huge gut of the turnip animal. In the greenhouse, a very nutritious vegetable (the finger fruit) can be grown. To sow this vegetable, finger fruit must first be found in the wild.
-Animal hides are now cleaned and tanned using a new structure, the hide rack. Both rawhide and tanned hide can be made from the thunder chicken and used for making cordage and a bellows.
-Fresh firewood can now be chopped from spoak branches. When placed in the new woodpile structure, it will quickly dry and turn into firewood.
-A compost heap can now be set up, it will accelerate decomposition of plant material placed in it.
-Gold can be dug up and made into projectiles for the black powder rifle. (Gold is plentiful on the planet)
-A more advanced smithy can now be set up. With an iron anvil it can produce items such as:
-A blunderbuss, (simple muzzle-loaded shotgun) can now be made. It shoots pebbles in a wide arc, useful against varmint.
-New tools: Spade, trowel, hand axe, pickaxe. Many of them useful as weapons.

ANIMATIONS:
-Characters will now amble about when idling instead of standing in place.
-New animations: Standing up from sleeping. Using pickaxe, shovel, hammer, hand axe.

UI:
-Weapons now have data about efficiency against different animal species. Can be found on the DATA tooltip.

BUG/CRASH FIXES:
-Fixed a crash that happened when the aircraft on Twinkler Island was salvaged
-The field lab and fire extinguisher cartridge is no longer missing from Twinkler Island
-Fixed a bug that prevented the cooled food cache from cooling its contents
-Fixed a crash that happened when claiming Whipjaw remains: http://steamcommunity.com/app/284100/discussions/0/535151589897753768/-The dog will now only eat the amounts of food that it actually needs
-Animals killed in a trap should now be automatically claimed by the colony.

About This Game

We take the colony sim genre into the near future, onto a lush planet where humans are making their first foothold. Characters and alien wildlife are brought to life through a rigorous simulation and the game plays out as a tug-of-war between humans and nature on a planet full of opportunities and dangers.
Understanding the alien environment is crucial - the resources you discover will provide a number of production options making you able to adapt when food gets scarce and equipment breaks.

Your roleIn this game you will not feel like a commander issuing orders, because the settlers have no command chain but rely on voting if they disagree. You will get the sense that you're part of the community, organizing your group’s decisions, not bossing them around. You do this by using the Pioneer Planning Unit, an instrument issued by the Tau Ceti Mission. You will feel like a member of the group, sharing their victories and failures.
We will keep polishing the A.I. to ensure that humans and animals act as realistically and independently as possible.

SettingThe game takes place in a realistic sci-fi setting, in a plausible future without Faster-than-Light travel.
The year is 2238 and Earth’s first and only interstellar colonization ship has reached the end goal of its 100 year journey – a terran planet in the Tau Ceti star system. 2100 humans will now make this planet their new home. There are no additional supplies or reinforcements coming in - they must make do with what they brought and what they can find.

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Narrative scenariosIn the Twinkler Island scenario, you guide the explorers to survive by scouting the surroundings, locate useful resources and make improvised tools, weapons and structures. For food, you can hunt the elusive “thunder chicken” or try to spear the fish that inhabit the waters. There will be attacks by pack predators such as the so-called “twinkler” which emerges from the caves littering the landscape. To repel them you can construct ranged weapons and build fences, but to permanently end the threat you must locate their nests and come up with a way to clear them out.

In the tutorial scenario Castaways, you guide a group of stranded sailors to make food, fight animals and build signal pyres.

In Muckroot Research Station, you join a group of scientists as they explore an unknown biome.

The scenarios we have now are hand-made but we have ways to randomize things such as starting location, number of resources, camp members, enemies etc.
We will keep developing new scenarios with different objectives and features.

Sandbox mapsIf you want a free-form experience, you will soon be able to play sandbox maps with limited narrative and unlimited play time.

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Known bugs/issues:
This is a management game with indirect control, which means that you're not supposed to directly command a character to carry out a task. But, if ordered tasks are not being carried out, (the characters are just standing around) and you don't know why, then it's either a bug or a feedback problem (the game should explain the reason to you). We take these issues very seriously and will work to address them whenever they show up.

I just caved in and bought it , I played through the tutorial scenario and found it extremely engaging to play .. I think when this game is complete it could well scratch an itch for a type of game I have had for a very long time , I really hope they finish it and it doesn't end up abandoned. The AI pathing needs work and maybe a way to speed things up a little .. it can get a little tedious waiting for your guys to do something. Overall I am glad I got it , really really hope they stick with it and make it the awesome game it has the potential to be :)

Hard to review this game. It's in an early stage of development, sure, but even allowing for the small development team it feels like its been stuck in the same rut for a long time. There have been several updates, but nothing has changed much and the fundamental flaws remain. The interface is problematic, and the control system feels disconnected.

I've persevered and have spent about 4 hours playing the test scenarios, but inevitably I only stay there for 15 minutes at a time before getting bored and frustrated. I'd like to hope that it will evolve into something interesting - the potential is certainly there - but so far it's just not grabbing me.\

Thumbs down, I'm afraid - I'd like to give the developers more encouragement, but if the question is "would I recommend this to a friend at this time" then the answer is simply "no".

Unclaimed World has oodles of potential oozing out from between the flaws. But don't be tempted, the flaws are terrible and many. After playing 0.1.2.1 on 24th January I'm going to probably give this game a year or more before trying again.

First off, the good stuff. Unclaimed World is like Majesty and Dwarf Fortress at it's core. You designate tasks and one or more of your free-willed plebs will undertake them. There is no mico-managing workers. The banter between the various colonists is the perfect way to introduce the new world. The scenarios are not random so after a couple of tries you'll know which colonists you get and what their skills are.

I like the graphical style and the smooth character animations, they give a good sense of pioneering on an alien planet. The character portraits, whilst somewhat caricatured, make knowing and empathising with said characters much easier.

But.

That's where the good stops.

There are currently only three stages, the tutorial which is so hand-holdy it's a chore; and not one I've forced myself to complete. The first stage which is impossible to lose unless you try really, really had to get your colonists killed. And lastly the second stage which crashes fairly early in. Don't expect content, it's not here.

The user interface is awful. And this is after the "UI and animation improvements" patch. Clicks get ignored, menus disappear, compents that should be translucent are not and parts of componets are missing. The map is the only way to scroll around (if there are keyboard shortcuts I never found them). But that's all the map does, nothing is marked on it in and it would completely pointless if there was another way to scroll.

Unclaimed World is SLOW. The characters idle along at maybe 5 to 10 pixels a seond but have to traverse areas that are thousands of pixels across. Leaving the game to run whilst doing other things seems to be the only meaningful way to play.

And the speed gets worse on the (previously mentioned) second stage. The characters still move at about the same rate but the screen refreshes at less than a frame a second until eventually it becomes a slide show and crashes. I'm sure a simple 2D game should run better than this.

The artificial intelligence in a game where units can't be directly controlled has to be good. But in Unclaimed World it's not. It's awful. I can't seem to prioritise tasks. Gathering seems to take precedence over everything. So if there are a couple of construction projects going on and I set a new gather task then everyone drops what they're doing and rushes (relatively) to all gather the same stick of firewood. Practicaly this means as long as there are gather tasks construcion tasks will not finish.

Furthermore the AI in combat is even more deficient, with the characters commenting that they must attack as a group and then walking in one at a time; and only after the previous character has been killed. It's horrible. They also seem to get lost and will wander backwards and forwards through an enemy nest despite there not being any tasks near it.

In closing, Unclaimed World has a lot of potential with a good exploration and command vibe but it is so far from being completed that it's barely even a tech demo - let alone a full game. Avoid.